Unfair
by Minus the Honey Bear
Summary: Jupiter Potter-Lewis has issues, and Gaspard is just one of the bigger ones. Sequel to Exceptions.
1. Meet Jupiter, Hate Gaspard

If my parents taught me anything, it was that life was never fair. I was fifteen, I was failing school and the only thing I had to rely on was a semi-satisfying fancy upon the most gorgeous boy to ever enter Hogwarts: Gaspard Scabior. And the most disheartening fact was the fact that he'd never notice me for the sole fact that I had whiskers. Well, really less whiskers than more invisible feelers on my face but they were still there and you know, sometimes the charm wore off and in certain sunlight you could see them catch a bit of a glow and they looked brown. I was the school brown-noser and I had a brown nose. That wasn't lost on a lot of the really immature boys who roamed the hall, believe me.

Alright, so maybe mum always said that the only true sign of beauty was confidence, and dad always harped on about how I was averagely normal looking, and if someone didn't like the fact that my mother had been genetically altered after an accident in their shop and I came out sort of different to most other children, then they didn't deserve to know me. At this point, though, I didn't care about any of that. I was in love, I was a freak-show and none of that encouragement stuff really made any difference on a fifteen year old girl. How was I supposed to be happy under these conditions?

It didn't help that granddad always went on about how Gaspard's grandfather tortured him and my Great Aunt Hermione and Great Uncle Ron back in the old war that happened hundreds of years ago or whatever. Just because someone's family was evil, didn't mean that made someone evil. It also didn't help that the only time I got to see him was during detention. His detention. Not mine. I kind of volunteered for Professor Longbottom in the greenhouses because, well, school was hard, and Gaspard had hexed all these Gryffindor first years and gotten a months' worth of detention and so I went to help out so I could spend time with him. He'd always shake his brunette maze (stained green in some parts to really show his Slytherin pride) and he'd sort of sneer at me - the first Potter that was ever in a house other than Gryffindor - and shake his head like he thought I was pathetic. Understandably, because I was.

"Alright, Scabior?" I asked sweetly. Mum always said I had the sweetest, most melodic voice that could melt even the stoniest of hearts. It was alright, I supposed, up until the point where purs sometimes snuck in. Still, it was my best feature and no way I'd get a guy without speaking to him. What else was going to reel them in? The gangly appeal of awkwardness and self-loathing?

Like always, Gaspard snickered at my attempts of communication and flipped me the bird. I just turned back to the plants. We were working with attack plants in class. In the seventh year greenhouse, it was all made of poisonous stuff.

"No talking," Professor Longbottom said astutely. It was kind of weird having him as a teacher. During summer he'd go to my grandparents' house and have long tea with them and laugh about the good old days. This Christmas he got me a book entitled Herbology: You may not be great, but this will help. He'd ask me every class if I read it. Not sure what he was trying to say, but considering Grandma Ginny sent me a letter telling me if my grades didn't improve she'd start sending me howlers, I was getting a general idea of what the issue was. "Scabior, you're over there." We both looked to a collection of great big red flowers under a glass dome. Gaspard obviously knew what they were because he just looked bored. Not that he ever looked anything else, but he had different levels of boredom that I had studied in all of my five years loving him. This one was, I would rather be anywhere else and I hate Professor Longbottom but hey, I'm here, aren't I? It was my sixth favourite one."And Jupiter, we need to discuss your essay."

That was another weird thing about having a teacher who was also a family friend. He always called me by my first name, which I hated. Jupiter Potter-Lewis. Urgh. What type of torture was that supposed to be? Especially when people screwed up their noses and asked me where my parents got that name from, and I had to admit they got it from a hybrid animal, the first Potter Lewis experimentation that got my parents together. It was almost like screaming look, I was named after a cat-owl and now I have whiskers, whiskers I say! and expecting them not to notice my slight abnormalities. It was already bad enough I got my dad's neurocies. Mum said they were cute. Freak cat/falcon/teenage girls were not the height of social acceptance. I could shout that from the rooftop but I doubt anyone would care.

So, I sort of stumbled over to Professor Longbottom's desk and he sat me down and started talking about how a mandrake wasn't a person, although they looked like one, and so it was not "creepy" or "breaking wizarding laws" to use them in potions. I grew up in an environment where every living thing was to be seen and appreciated and loved as something wonderful and unique, I just didn't think my parents were betting that extended along to plants. I tried to argue my case, but it came off sounding like more of a crazy rant rather than a deliberated argument if Gaspard's callous laughter was anything to go by. Sometimes I wondered why I even loved him. He didn't even understand me, and I was beginning to think he never would either. Finally, Professor Longbottom allowed my humiliation to end. He sent me across to another part of the room away from all the flowers to iron out the kinks in my essay. Personally, I didn't think it was that bad, definitely not bad enough to get a 'T'. There was almost too much ink covering my essay to make the required changes to it, and I was almost considering slitting my throat to get out of it when destiny took the matter out of my hands.

A sharp prang struck my neck and I put my hand there to see blood, so much blood, and a bit of black ooze climbing down into my blouse. All I could think as I dropped to the floor as a lavender plant struck out again was that I was joking and that I really needed to learn not to give the universe such clear openings in the future. We seemed to be in the right place, though, for plant poisons and cures because as soon as I hit the ground, the buzzing stopped and the stinging stopped and, hey look!, Professor Longbottom was standing over me with so much worry in his eyes.

"Jupiter, are you okay?" he asked, clearly quite panicked.

What was I supposed to say?

Apparently my brain was against me and considered my life not a big enough joke already, because it came out with, "Super duper lemon scooper." Like what was that even supposed to mean? Between the essay and the love of my life hearing that doozy, the plant could happily take me now.

"We better get you to Madame Silssica," Professor Longbottom fretted. Suddenly, his gaze jumped up to Gaspard's and Gaspard gave us a look of horror as Herb Man said, "Scabior, take her to the Hospital Wing."

"Not my problem," Gaspard replied. He honestly sounded very unamused by the whole thing, though his eyes lit up when he saw me writhing on the ground in pain.

"Well, make it yours," Professor Longbottom snapped as he tried to heave me up, "because if you don't, that's another months' detention and you'll have to explain to your house why you lost fifty points." Gaspard glared so heatedly at Professor Longbottom that my ovaries exploded. Still, he threw down his secateurs and came over to me. I almost peed myself as his wand levelled at my chest and I went four feet off the ground in a levitation field.

"I ain't touching her," he snarled at Professor Longbottom's disapproving stare. I felt like yelling out to him, _can't you see that he was just bluffing_? but considering it was some quality alone time with my love I didn't so much as mew. Well, it wasn't so much _quality_ alone time so much as _quantity_ alone time, but who was I to argue? You see? If there was any such thing my life had taught me, it was that it just wasn't fair. 

If my parents had taught my anything, it was that life wasn't fair. Here I was, stuck carting around Jupiter bloody Potter-Lewis because she couldn't see a freaking terrornaughter plant sneak up on her. It was bad enough she was basically in love with me and stalked me around the school, but now I was trapped in a corridor with her while she garbled on about some tripe? Hell bloody no. Soon as we got to the castle entrance, I dropped her on her fat arse and let her walk the way there. If I hadn't already lost so many house points to the fact that I'd be sleeping outside the rest of the year if I lost any more, I would have left her there to herself. I scowled at her, hoping it would encourage her not to speak, but those stupid pink lips crashed wide open as soon as her feet touched the ground.

"Thank you for doing this," she crooned perkily like I'd had a say in the matter. I'd rather be anywhere else, even back with those puny first years who well deserved what they got. Some Gryffindor git told them to ask me about my snatcher activities, so I hexed them all the way to the vanishing closet on the other side of the castle. Taught them not to mess with a seventh year Slytherin bloke. Gotta keep those shits in line somehow, especially since they all listened to Harry Prat-head, the last remaining cousin of Potter-Lewis still at this school. I was gonna be so happy when I got outta this place and never had to see his git face ever again. "It's okay, it's not the first time I've been struck down in my prime. There was Joe Wadcock just last year, you remember him? He got me with one of those bogey curses, I can't remember which one, but mucus, everywhere!"

Well, that was just disgusting. Still, it was pretty funny. In fact, seeing her struck down by a rather placid plant like a terrornaughter (named for it's naught but terror attitude towards our kind) was pretty hilarious. I watched for a good three minutes as it slowly slithered its sticky leaves towards her before dropping its blackened, sharpened point into her neck. Bloody hilarious. Would've laughed if not for professors being around.

"Knew you'd love that," she said cheerfully. Why did all fifth-year Slytherin girls have to be so damn annoying? It was just then that I noticed that we were going towards our common room rather than the Hospital Wing like I was supposed to have done.

"We're going the wrong way," I spat, loathe to interact with it.

"Nup, we aren't, this is the way to the portrait," she replied. I wanted to bang my head against a wall. Better yet, I wanted to bang her head into a wall until it bleed. I wondered if her mouth would keep going then, if the blood would just all pour in and gargle her into an eternity of silence. It was all I could dream for when it concerned Potter-Lewis.

"I would kill myself before entering the common room with you," I gagged.

"You know, your honesty is really refreshing," Potter-Lewis hummed to herself. Dare I say it, a bit of a crumpled cat sound came out too. It disgusted me, the rumours that her parents had copulated with a cat, or the ones about the animal orgies in their shop, and that she was the by-product of it. How was anyone supposed to concentrate in school with such a monstrosity roaming the halls where normal people lived? I reminded myself once again to sign the petition Peggsy'd drawn up to have her expelled. With one well-aimed Jelly Legs Jinx, Potter-Lewis dropped to the floor in a heap. I snickered as she flailed about loudly. Wondered how long it'd take her to get to the common room in her state.

"Hope no one finds you any time soon," I told her, jovially enough since my voice was coated in hatred for the girl at my back. That was when my legs collapsed out from under me and I turned to face her. Potter-Lewis's stub of a wand was pointed at me. My mouth dropped open out of shock. "You _hexed_ me," I snarled.

"You'll never love me, will you?" she wailed. "You'll never care for me? Or try to at least be civil?"

"You're a stupid, disgusting half-breed of a pain in my side, how could I ever feel anything for you?" I hissed. I hoped the heat of my gaze would cause her to spontaneously combust, but she was still in front of me a moment later so no such luck.

"Fine then," she blubbered. I watched triumphantly as she used her arms to drag her body past me. I thought she'd keep going all the way down the hall and then right to the portrait and I was going to enjoy her struggle, but then when she got even with me, she flipped her body so she was she was uncomfortably close. Before I could say anything, her pink lips were on top of mine and, well, my mind cleared itself in surprise. She pressed her lips harder, pulled her body closer and angled her face so her breath was on my cheek.

Something tickled my nose.

Then, it was over. Potter-Lewis crawled away like a seal making her way through an artic blizzard and I watched after her. I had no idea what just happened, but my stomach shifted uncomfortably as the Jelly Legs Counter-curse fleetingly fluttered through my mind. I was getting one hell of a view of her arse from this angle though, so I figured why bother and watched as she tottered around the corner without even sending a glance behind. She'd left me stumped in the corridor with nothing left to do other than to follow right after her.

Maybe Potter-Lewis had some moves on her after all. Life really was not fair.


	2. Never mind Gaspard, Farewell Jupiter

_Shit._

Shit, shit, shit.

This was bloody Belarus.

What fucked up reason did Jupiter Potter-Lewis have for being in Minsk? It's not like Minsk was a hot-spot for wizarding travel or a world tourism centre for muggles either.

She'd walked in like usual - sashayed really - with those bright tawny eyes of hers and that sort of feather growing from the back of her head and a bit of brown catching her adorable nose and those incredibly luscious pink lips. Then, her eyes met mine. I think it hurt most how she just glanced over me like I wasn't even there. She turned to bloody Randall and began laughing like he was an amazing comedian and she'd spent all her life waiting for one of his bigoted jokes.

Randall the randy bigot. Not a name I came up with but fitting.

"Checking out the new girl, eh?" Aleski chuckled. He might have been native, but he spoke even better English than a lot of the English volunteers here.

"New girl?" I craned my neck around to look at the bloke. He seemed to have all the information all the time. Probably 'cause he was shagging one or all of the girls in Employee Relations.

"Yeah, she's setting up this Pro-Life thing around eastern Europe. Trying to get a lot of the accepted practices in wizarding society termed as 'murder of freedom and living rights'. Pretty fucked up if you ask me. Heard she's not even human, so I'd watch out for that one."

So Potter-Lewis had really made something of herself, then. I could barely hear my reply over my heart yammering in my chest. Potter-Lewis was making her way right through the cubicles and getting closer every second.

"She's not," I shrugged.

"_Blin_," he swore, "How do you know?"

"I went to school with her. She praised the ground I walked on, pretty impossible to live with considering how in love with me she was. You hear things," I shrugged. Aleski looked between her and me and broke out in laughter. I scowled.

"Right, right, she's so in love and hasn't sent a look your way?" he scoffed. I kicked his chair and he went right to the ground with a loud thump. If not for the anti-wand rule in the office, he would've been hexed a long while back. Of course, the noise brought a lot of attention to us and the office manager Darya a frigid bitch if ever there were, dragged Potter-Lewis our way, and that would've been all well and good if I'd managed to do anything else than be insanely attracted to her.

After she'd puckered up and laid one on me in my last year, there was just something indescribable about that particular Potter off-spring. I was only there from February onwards, but she drove me crazy.

First, she pretended nothing happened and got on with life. Without focusing on me, her grades went up and she even made a few friends who I hated for the sole fact that they spent a lot of time cussing about me in front of her, but I ignored them with only a few hexes sent their way. Then, I let it slip what happened, her kissing me and all, and she had the gall to deny it. Even got herself one of those Ravenclaw boyfriends like they were going out of style. While I was there, not a week went by that Damien Wood didn't get sent to the hospital wing. Finally, I couldn't take it any more. A month before graduation I cornered her in a hallway and snogged her right then and there, and she just bloody pushed me away and left me there like I was some worthless ghost who'd been commenting on the soundness of the architecture. Then, school was over, I was out and summer arrived with a whole bunch of drama that I didn't want or need, but she was my siren and hell if I was gonna let some Ravenclaw twat dirty my girl after all she put me through. Got so bad her dad and her boyfriend set a hippogriff on me and I ran around her front lawn for a good half-hour as it swooped me from above. Then I remembered I was a wizard and I got the fuck outta there before that bitch embarrassed me any more. That was nine years ago, and besides her last two years at Hogwarts when I turned up for Hogsmeade visits and owled her every week just waiting for her to give in, I hadn't heard from her since. And now, coming towards me, she acted like I was a total stranger with nothing going on. Course I rearranged my desk so the deck of Exploding Snap was hidden, but other than that I had 'nuthing to hide.

"Joop," the office _cyka_ spat as she pointed to Aleski and me, "these are some of the boys who work here. They work at finding the lost children who run away from the magic schools across Europa and return them to where they are found."

"She means," Aleski smiled charmingly at my...whatever Potter-Lewis was to me, "Your lover and I here find the children abused in school and return them to an institution where they'll be happy at, sometimes that means giving them back to where they came from, most times it means sourcing new schools and getting a feel for them."

Potter-Lewis beamed at the two of us, her eyes never even touching my face. "Wow, that's really sweet, actually. So you _snatch_ children from unfavourable circumstances and deposit them somewhere safer?"

Oh yeah, she'd definitely recognised me.

"Um, that is what I just said, yes," Aleski nodded. He seemed bored, probably deciding she was insane, and turned back to his desk in disinterest.

"Guess I can't get mad at that?" I mumbled. Last time my owl was sent back unopened, I sent her a rather rude howler during one of her exams which explicitly yelled at her using words like "filthy half-breed", "circus side-show accident" and "teasing tramp of a freak". From the cease and desist letter her Great Uncle Percy and the bloody Minister of Magic sent me in legal representation of the Potter-Weasley-Lewis family, I gathered it had been pretty traumatic for her.

"No," she shook her head with that dumb giant smile on her face. "I didn't recognise you, Gaspard," she cooed sweetly, "You seem so...like an officer worker now."

"I am an officer worker now," I said stupidly. What was that supposed to mean anyhow?

"I just mean," she laughed, "no green, no snarl, you seem to be contributing to a cause that you really care about, you're wearing a vest. And you just seem...mature. It's a good to hear about." My hands went up to my hair self-consciously. Part of the job was a strict dress code. Probably because they didn't want kids wandering off with people who looked like perverts. Pretty hard to prove you aren't one, you see?

"That 'spose to make me feel good?" I snarled right up at her.

"Gaspard!" Darya gasped, "Language like that is not good, especially for an office like ours."

"Oh, it's okay," Potter-Lewis laughed. She put a hand on Darya's elbow and pushed her off. "We go way back." Darya looked worried but left us to talk. I tried to ruffle my hair a bit to look more like the bad boy she was completely enamoured with all those years back, but it seemed to only want to behave now.

"Last I heard you were Potter-Lewis-Wood," I sneered. Seeing that marriage announcement in the paper wasn't my bed day. I'd stayed home from work and drank myself until Aleski and Ruslan from the floor below took me out to party the rest of the week. Potter-Lewis lowered her head until it was in line with mine.

"I'm home now," she cooed. Then, she leant forwards and laid a kiss right down on my lips, better than the one all those years ago and I completely crumbled. Didn't matter what she did or where she went, I'd be her anything any time she wanted. Life was so unfair.

If I was entirely honest with myself, it hadn't been a surprise at all to see Gaspard Scabior swinging around in an office chair when I got off the lift at the seventh floor. He stopped and his eyes found mine for all of two seconds, which wasn't surprising either. I had a built up Gaspard detection system deep within me, and since my sixth year, I knew he'd tuned in to me as well. It had just always been that way with us, whenever the other walked in the room it stopped for all of a heart-wrenching, gut-thrusting, vomit-inducing moment before the spinning stopped and the lights came on again. If I was even more honest with myself, I'd spotted his picture helping Latvian orphans find shelter and food in some stupid _Graduates Helping After Hogwarts_ leaflet in my cousin Harry's education department while I waited for him to finish up so we could go get some lunch. It was crazy, but my Pro-Life campaign had only got the support of a few witches and wizards in England and I was going through a divorce after Damien's great-grandfather introduced him to Quidditch and he'd decided to quit his life and focus everything on that, so I decided what the heck? and got up and visited Belarus for a fortnight. There, I found Gaspard and saw he didn't have a girlfriend, he had a steady job and just like I'd always suspected, after school he'd really come into himself. He knew who he was, and he was a damn attractive adult who came to the rescue of eastern European children every day. I'd gotten married too young once, I really wouldn't mind doing it again with someone I'd loved since I was eleven.

Grandma Ginny had a hell of a lot to say about me chasing after an old flame as she called it, especially one who'd given our family so much grief. Should've seen them all when I got that rather disturbing howler in my seventh year Herbology exam. Failed spectacularly, of course, left in tears and the amount of fuss my family and the students of the school kicked up on my behalf was not only entertaining but gave me a lot of comfort. I never knew I was so appreciated until then. But, it wasn't her decision. It wasn't dad's decision who ordered a fleet of hippogriff from around Europe. It wasn't even cousin Harry's decision who told me quite clearly that if I took Gaspard's name he'd no longer consider me part of the family. _Well, stow your worries_, I told him, _because I'm not being named Jupiter Gwendally Potter-Lewis-Wood-Scabior because that would just be ridiculous_. He didn't know what to make of that, and neither did I. Still don't.

So, I stormed right in to that office and pretended like I hadn't seen him. I'd been stalking him for a month and had no idea how to approach it. First time, he wasn't there. I pretended like I had an interview and worked my way in to see the office manager, a middle-aged woman named Darya. She seemed alright, but she liked cats and so I guess I subconsciously charmed her over maybe with my feline likeness. Second time, he wasn't there either. I was getting pretty annoyed as I set up my office and began to wonder if he actually did work here or maybe I'd been totally delusional this entire time. Third and fourth time, nothing. I came in, worked, set up a plan to really get my campaign out there and even went on a coffee run for the entire floor, but nothing. An entire week passed, I was miserable, and it was only when Darya and a few other girls told me the entire floor was back did we have a welcoming party. About time, I caught a glimpse of my love completely horrified that I was closing in on his desk, let alone in his office, let alone in his country, let alone in his continent. And yeah, I know, England is part of Europe whatever, but it's also part of the UK and Europe is not apart of the UK and so does that technically still make it European? But whatever, you know, I was finally there and he was glancing up at me with those beautiful blue-grey eyes and I was eleven all over again. So, I went over. I made a snatchers joke to try my luck and not for the first time did I see adoration in his eyes.

And that was it. He still loved me. So, I went for it. I kissed him. All those years came swarming back into my head and I knew this was right. We were going to settle down in Belarus of all places, buy a house, have a few children who would not be sent to Hogwarts but rather some other place, and then my mother and father would expand Potter Lewis Pet, Vet and Supplies out to eastern Europe, Gaspard would continue to set children up with the education they deserved and people would finally stop laughing at me for thinking all living things - plants included! - deserved to have fair, compassionate lives of their own and out children would be an inventor, a treasure finder and a muggle actor and Gaspard and I would retire in the Bahamas and he didn't have a say in any of it, because life wasn't fair. But you know what? I loved this one to bits.


End file.
